Battleground ’16: Election Day Is Finally Here

Everything you need to know as you wait at polls, make history, or riot!

TOPSHOT - Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton (R) and Republican nominee Donald Trump walk off the stage after the final presidential debate at the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 19, 2016. / AFP / Robyn Beck (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

NEW YORK — But not yet gone.

There is still time today for the pundits to turn to electoral maps and potentially a few nationally-televised meltdowns on the major media networks, and much more time after that for the historians to judge President Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy. For now, we, like many American voters, can take comfort, and a moment — or hours waiting in line at the polls — to reflect on one of the most bombastic, caustic, and utterly fantastic American presidential elections in our lifetimes as it draws to a close.

And that, for all the threats to withdraw from alliances at the foundation of the global order and to close America’s famed doors to refugees on the basis of their religion, for all the episodes of cyber espionage believed to be directed by the Russian state and warring leaks out of institutions from WikiLeaks to the FBI, for all the mutation and proliferation of terrorist threats and unending war — in the end, the very American voters whom Republican nominee Donald Trump maligned to motivate his presidential campaign are the ones who appear ready to hand him the loss he so fears. And the candidate whom Obama himself called (with sly self-deprecation) the most qualified to ever run for the presidency, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, appears positioned to win.

And America’s first black president appears likely to hand off the title of commander in chief to the country’s first woman president.

We can still savor that history-making moment. It’s not yet gone.

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Even if Clinton wins, some of the president’s biggest national security and diplomatic policies aren’t a sure thing.

With less than three months left in office, President Barack Obama will soon relinquish his foreign-policy legacy to the gimlet-eyed gaze of historians and presidential scholars. But before that happens, the White House is hellbent on completing an ambitious to-do list that will face a considerable head wind in Congress.

*Hacking voting machines isn’t necessarily what you should be worried about. It’s fake headlines like this one that could upend Election Day.

False claims of election hacking and voter fraud and suppression could cause widespread chaos and cast into question the validity of the election outcome. And such a misinformation campaign, experts say, is far easier to pull off than hacking election machines on a mass scale and picking a winner.

From Cambodia to Zimbabwe to North Korea, the Republican nominee has cornered the authoritarian autocrat demographic.

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Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustrations

Molly O’Toole is a senior reporter at Foreign Policy, covering immigration, refugees, and national security. She was FP’s sole 2016 presidential campaign reporter, on the trail from New Hampshire to Nevada. Previously, she covered the politics of national security for Atlantic Media’s Defense One, where she reported from Congress, the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department. Before that, she was a news editor at the Huffington Post. Molly has also reported on national and international politics for Reuters, the Nation, The Associated Press, and Newsweek International, among others, from Washington, New York, Mexico City, and London. She received her dual master’s degree in journalism and international relations from New York University and her bachelor’s from Cornell University and in 2016 was a grant recipient of the International Women’s Media Foundation. She will always be a Californian. @mollymotoole